Reply to Tim Wise

In his Dec. 16 article about David Horowitz, “Making Nice With Racists,” Tim Wise treats Znet members to a smear-by-association that would be hard to top for recklessness. His argument can be summarized as follows: (1) David Horowitz once said a few nice things about Jared Taylor. (2) Jared Taylor is a wicked racist. (3) Jared Taylor has sponsored conferences—open to the public—that have been attended by David Duke and Don Black. (4) Therefore David Horowitz is “ultimately no better than” Jared Taylor, and is “a Jew who makes nice with Nazis.” Whew! When the right used to do this sort of thing it was called McCarthyism. How soon we forget.

Mr. Wise’s entire article is, of course, an attempt to make those with whom he disagrees look simple-minded and vicious by offering short, out-of-context quotations. My irredeemable wickedness, for example, is demonstrated by the following:

“... in some important traits—intelligence, law-abidingness, sexual restraint, academic performance, resistance to disease — whites can be considered ‘superior’ to blacks.”

What did I actually say?

“There is no scale on which they [racial differences] can all be ranked so as to draw across-the-board conclusions about racial “superiority” or “inferiority.” AR [American Renaissance magazine (www.amren.com), of which I am editor] therefore draws no such conclusions. It is certainly true that in some important traits—intelligence, law-abidingness, sexual restraint, academic performance, resistance to disease—whites can be considered ‘superior’ to blacks. At the same time, in exactly these same traits, North Asians appear to be ‘superior’ to whites. Is someone who believes that there are probably genetic reasons for this a ‘yellow supremacist’?”

Mr. Wise continues to quote me:

“Without constant urging from liberal whites, virtually all Africans would be content to put their fate in the hands of a (white) race that they recognize as smarter and more fair-minded than their own.”

I indeed wrote these words — but in a book review in which I was summarizing the author’s controversial views, not stating my own. Can Mr. Wise not tell the difference or, as in the previous quotation, does he simply have no interest in accuracy?

Mr. Wise introduces me to your readers as some “who advocates an all-white U.S.,” but I have never advocated such a thing. I have repeatedly pointed out that people prefer the company of people like themselves, that this is natural and healthy, and that we should organize our society on this assumption. In this context I have proposed two policies: the repeal of all anti-discrimination laws and an end to immigration. To say that I advocate an all-white U.S. is to suggest I want to kick non-whites out of the country. Nice try, Mr. Wise, but completely false.

Correcting the errors of someone with so little regard to the truth is tedious and probably pointless, so I will try only once more. One of Mr. Wise’s targets is J. Philippe Rushton of the University of Western Ontario. Prof. Rushton holds two doctorates from the Unversity of London, is a fellow of the Guggenheim Foundation, and of the American, British, and Canadian Psychological Associations. He is the author of six books, and hundreds of scholarly articles. Between 1986 and 1990, he was the 11th most cited psychologist in the world. He is undoubtedly the world’s foremost authority on racial differences — and what does Mr. Wise say about him? He calls him a “scholar” (in quotation marks) “who says blacks have smaller brains because they have larger penises and ‘you can’t have everything.’” A distortion as crude as this can only be deliberate, as a visit to Prof. Rushton’s www.charlesdarwinresearch.org will demonstrate.

If Mr. Wise has an argument with Mr. Horowitz he should engage him directly. Instead, he teases out the most tenuous connections to people Mr. Horowitz doesn’t even know, distorts their views, and then acts as if Mr. Horowitz were responsible for the resulting nonsense. This is not journalism; it is childish screaming.

In the past, I have often found Z Magazine incisive and thought-provoking. I see I shall have to approach its articles with considerably more skepticism in the future.